Om haar veilig te houden
by pinkswallowsun
Summary: Nikki gets attacked at a crime scene, and Harry reflects on the days events. Basically Harry/Nikki fluff, with a bit of plot on the side. Oneshot. Thank you Artemis for pointing out the error in the title-it was Afrikaans,my grammar isn't always great!x


**I'm not sure if this is any good, but I was feeling guilty about not uploading anything for a few days, and this is the only thing I have completely finished at the moment. Hope it's not a complete load of rubbish, let me know :) **

**I have a couple of new chapters of Sunset in South Africa almost ready and a few more oneshots I'm just tweaking, I promise to try and get them up over the next few days, in between GCSEs :( I will be SO glad when it's the summer holidays!**

**Hope you like, please review, and I'll try and get some better stuff up here soon,**

**Love Flossie xxx**

**Om te hou haar veilig**

**(To keep her safe)**

You don't know how she does it, all these dangerous situations, but you do know that it worries you no end. Seven years down the line you've lost count of the number of times she's managed to get herself hurt at crime scenes, the number of times she's come between the guilty and the innocent, the number of times your heart has stopped beating, just for a moment. You've almost come to accept it now, or so you tell yourself. But each time it happens, each time she somehow manages to work her way into danger, she makes panic flood through your body in a way that only Nikki can. Because you're terrified of losing her; you're scared stiff that one day, there won't be anyone there to protect her. And sometimes, just sometimes, you think maybe that's your worst fear.

It was a bad one today, the nightmare she managed to get herself caught up in. You were there with her; you saw the whole thing, and perhaps that's the reason this one is affecting you so much. You were there the whole time, so why did it take you so long to react? Why did you leave her struggling alone, why didn't you do something faster? Those are the questions swimming around your head constantly this evening, and yet you have no answers.

It was early afternoon when it happened. You had been called out to a crime scene on the outskirts of London and Nikki, bored of paperwork and sitting around waiting for her own case to be called in, had tagged along with you, saying she didn't care what you made her do, provided it got her out of the lab. And so the two of you had ended up arriving together at the crime scene an hour or so later; a crime scene which turned out to be a wreck of a construction site, bizarrely. The builders working at the site, knocking down a disused office block to make way for a new, modern building, had arrived at work late in the morning to find the body of a young woman lying in a pool of blood across their building site. It hadn't been a pleasant site, to say the least.

And so the two of them had crouched down beside the victim to examine her just as the DCI assigned to the case had appeared, and whilst your back had been turned, engaged in a conversation about… about… about something so unimportant that you can't even remember, it had happened. Suddenly your ears were filled with a shrill, terrified scream, and you turned around, knowing the sound of her voice immediately. And once again, your heart was filled with fear.

A tall, well-built man about three times her size was dragging Nikki across the construction site by her hair, having appeared out of nowhere and snatched her up, clearly undisturbed by her screams of terror. You jumped to your feet and sprinted after him, the police hot on your heels, but the man just turned to look at you for a brief moment, laughing cruelly, before slinging Nikki over his shoulder as if she were a rag doll and racing off across the site. Even now, looking back, you can't find a single word in the English language to describe the way you felt in that moment, watching her flailing helplessly but getting nowhere, only aggravating her attacker further. And then he had reached the end of the building site, suddenly confronted with a 2 metre-high iron fence. So you seized your chance and ran at the man, planning on grabbing Nikki off his shoulder and pulling her away, but he threw you down onto the floor, shocking you and leaving you momentarily motionless, and by the time you'd pulled yourself together he had your best friend pinned down on the ground, and, to your upmost horror, was hauling punches at her as she whimpered in despair, oblivious to the anger running through your veins. How could he hurt her like that? What had poor Nikki ever done to him? You didn't know. You couldn't think properly; you never can when your best friend is in peril, be it emotional or physical. You can't ever concentrate while she's in pain.

Somehow you were overcome with a burst of superhuman strength as the large man slammed a huge, black boot into her stomach, and within a matter of seconds you had grabbed her wrists and pulled her out of the way, gathering Nikki into your arms as the police seized her attacker and cuffed him, knowing she was hurt and you were possibly making it all worse by holding her so tightly, but unable to let her go. Holding her close seemed to convince you that she was safe, that nothing else was going to happen to her whilst you were looking after her. It that moment she was safe with you, and you know you'd keep her like that forever, if only you could.

It turned out that the mad man who had attacked Nikki was the father of the dead woman found at the crime scene. He said in his statement to the police that she had been 'violating his daughter's memory' by treating her as evidence of a crime and not a human being, which quite possibly made you the angriest you've ever felt in your life when you heard it. How could anyone possibly view it to be OK to viciously attack a pathologist, just for doing their job? OK, so the families of the victims you deal with can sometimes go a bit crazy in their grief, but this one was in a league all of his own. You just don't understand. You don't understand how anyone in their right mind could possibly want to hurt Nikki.

You ended up having to carry her back to your car and into the hospital, partly because she was so pale and shaky you were worried she'd faint on you, and partly because her ankle had swollen up to the point at which you didn't think you'd be able to put any weight on it even if you did let her. The two of you ended up spending the rest of the day in hospital, and almost 7 hours later you finally escaped, a badly sprained but thankfully not broken ankle, 2 cracked and 2 bruised ribs and a wide range of other bruises later. Now you're sat together on her sofa in front of yet another CSI rerun; you're seated on the left, while Nikki is sprawled across the sofa widthways, her head resting on the arm of the sofa and her torso across your lap, her hip bones digging into your legs, but you don't care. On any other day you'd throw her off and make some witty comment about the sharpness of her hips, but not today, not after everything she's been put through. God knows you'd put up with anything right now if it was making her feel better.

She's been asleep for a while now, her breathing soft and regular, but you can feel her stirring slightly and you know her peaceful state won't be lasting much longer. Sure enough, a few moments later she winces slightly and struggles to pull herself up into a sitting position, her face displaying a mixture of pain and tiredness. You wrap your arms around her torso gently and pull her up onto your lap, murmuring your apologies as you grip her ribs a little too tightly.

"Hey," you whisper, waiting for her eyes to meet yours before you continue. "How are you feeling?"

"M' OK," she mumbles, but the look on her face tells a very different story. You sigh and pull her into a hug, hoping somehow it'll make her feel better. It's the least you can do.

"Do you want some more painkillers?"

She pauses for a moment, thinking, then nods slightly. You take that as a bad sign; Nikki's never been one to admit a need for painkillers, so that alone is telling you she's struggling with the pain. You can't say you blame her. You feel nauseous just thinking about the vicious and unprovoked attack launched on her just a few hours later. So you lift her off your lap gently, sitting her on the other end of the sofa and wandering off to her kitchen. You return a few minutes later and hand her a glass of water, pressing the tablets into her other hand before sitting down next to her, your arm around her shoulders.

"Nikki?" you ask.

"Hmm?"

"Promise me not to do this again?"

She rolls her eyes at you. "Well I didn't exactly plan to get beaten up at a crime scene when I came into work this morning, did I?"

"Of course you didn't," you agree, taking the empty glass off her and placing it on the coffee table. "But that's not what I mean. I mean, promise me you won't worry me like this again."

She looks you in the eyes now, and you can tell she's touched. "Harry, you don't need to worry about me."

Now it's your turn to roll your eyes. Because that's so typically Nikki, insisting she doesn't need worrying about, oblivious to just how much you care about her. You know she thinks she's alone, that she thinks because she's without a family, she's also without people who care. Why can't she see that all the while you're around, she could never be alone?

But you can't tell her all of that, of course, that could jeopardise your friendship, big time. And so you just hold her a little tighter, kissing the top of her head in what you hope only looks like a friendly gesture, breathing a sigh of relief when you feel her relax. You'd keep her safe forever if you could, you know that much. Whatever happens, you'll do your best to protect her, and you'll be there to comfort her at the end of it. Whatever it takes.

"I know, Nikki," you tell her softly, feeling her breathing level out once more and hoping she'll remember your words when she wakes up. "I know I don't need to worry, but I still do. I always will."


End file.
